book clubbing in November

I feel like this post should be titled "Why We Hated Saturn". Not that we (meaning the book club) hated Why I Hate Saturn. Hate is really much too strong of a word for our reaction to the graphic novel, it just makes a wonderful play on the title.

In any case, this month was another graphic novel month for my book club. Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn was our topic and we were generally not crazy about the book.

Personally I liked the idea of the crazy sister from Saturn, but thought that Baker could have done more with that aspect of his story. And, I think the cover is fantastic. I just wish that the novel itself was more like what I expect from seeing the cover.

Overall we thought the story was a bit lacking with regard to the plot. We also found it jarringly disjointed (would we have liked it better if we'd read each section as a snippet like serial cartoons?). We also thought that the author - in this book - did not take full advantage of the genre. One of the attendees hit it on the head, I think, when he said that the panels were mostly "talking heads". Additionally, we thought that the protagonist wasn't a very convincing woman (a classic example of a man creating a female character and just not quite getting "it").

We did, however, universally like the section titles. The book also engendered a good conversation about the genre in general and about specific titles that individual attendees thought were good examples (or thought others would like).